Speaker
Description
Author: Rachele Donini (ASL 2 Savonese)
Background: The communication aims to offer suggestions and reflections on prevention practice and implementation based on the knowledge and experience of the author, who has been operating in the drug demand reduction field for the past 35 years. The communication will likely encourage and motivate young researchers and professionals to pursue and strengthen their orientation towards prevention. It will offer references and tools developed by the drug prevention scientific community throughout the author’s career to continue and update the acknowledgements that prevention science has gained thus far. In this communication, the prevention continuum is interpreted as the possibility of considering treatment and prevention as two areas that can help each other to empower their reciprocal missions. In the long run, the continuum in prevention also requires constant and focused advocacy efforts to empower the recognition of prevention as a science.
Methods: The presentation will offer an overview of the principal methodologies implemented in the past three decades for treating and especially preventing Substance Use Disorders (SUD). It will explore the path to evidence-based prevention, starting with the home-tailored prevention initiatives began in the 1990s and ending with the current evidence-based methods applied by researchers and professionals in the field.
Results: The results of the current prevention situation in Europe, and specifically in Italy, where the author is based, will be presented, referring to the milestones that have paved the way to evidence-based prevention as a science of value to the public health branch.
Discussion: Events, training, seminars, legislative statements, workforce professionalisation, research, and advocacy have contributed to reaching the stage where we have prevention societies across the world that push forward studies, researchers, and initiatives that have a positive impact on assuring a better and healthier life for the general population, with a specific focus on young generations.
| Conflict of interest | No conflict |
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